Concluding thoughts on atheism and Marxism
I came across an interesting article on Marxism, atheism and religion recently, and thought responding to it briefly would make a good conclusion to the discussion of Stalin and atheism (obvious differences between Marx and Stalin notwithstanding).
The article is entitled “I'm a Marxist and an Atheist But I Don't Think Religion Would Wither Away Under Socialism,” and was recently published in Ben Burgis’ Substack publication Philosophy for the People (June 25, 2023). I wanted to just put the link but that does not seem to be an option.
I don’t plan to critique it in detail, or to try and present a comprehensive rebuttal. I only want to focus on two main topics – atheism and Marx – and make some general observations. Having done this, I look forward to discussing a completely different topic next week.
When it comes to atheism, my contention is that no atheist is driven to that position by a calm and objective assessment of facts, or by any kind of logical necessity. Rather, I believe that atheists have adopted their position because of personal and subjective preferences. Those preferences can and do differ – naturally, not all atheists are the same.
The German philosopher Schopenhauer argued that reason was subordinate to will; that people first came to their desired conclusion, and then sought reasons after the fact to justify their initial desire. Now, I would not say this is true all of the time, but it is I think often true. I do believe it is always true when it comes to the rejection of God and the denial of his existence. Even if I am wrong when it comes to some isolated exceptions, I will still believe it holds true for the majority of people who say there is no God.
Of course, people can come to the same conclusion about the non-existence of God for different reasons and by different paths. Some are motivated by a desire for freedom. The necessity of being subject to any sort of rules is considered to be an obstacle to happiness and fulfillment (although when it comes to taking a road trip, traffic rules are not seen as obstacles to happiness, but rather as helps to a safer and more pleasant trip).
Others have an innate aversion to the idea of God. This is seen in the third chapter of Genesis, where Adam’s first instinct after his act of disobedience was to try and hide from God. The whole subject is something that many people just do not want anything to do with.
A third reason might be a guilty conscience. We all know that we have said and done things in our lives that we should not have, and many intensely want to avoid the thought of being held accountable for all that they have said and done – and even, the Bible says, for the thoughts and the intents of the heart.
A fourth reason is anger. Some atheists – again, not all of them – are overtly hostile and bitter in their condemnations of God, religion, and religious believers. Possibly they had negative experiences with their own fathers and project that onto God. Or maybe they are deeply unhappy with the world and with their own lives, and blame God for not having created a world that is more to their liking.
Finally, some people just see no need for God. They feel quite able to manage their lives without God, and it is a very small step from irrelevance to non-existence. This was my own situation for some years. During my four years at college I did not profess atheism, but neither did I go to church, read the Bible, or discuss religious subjects. I preferred just to avoid the whole subject, and I certainly existed as if there was no God – so I was an atheist in practice if not by profession.
Of course, an atheist can turn my argument against me and say that atheists have found the truth by clear and logical thinking. It is the theists, one might say, who believe in God because of hidden, subjective reasons. Perhaps they fear death; perhaps they are too weak to face life; maybe they just adopted their parents’ beliefs, or need an emotional father figure or a cosmic security blanket.
I concede there is some truth in that assertion. I feel no need to defend all theists or all forms of theism, and readily concede that many people believe in God in the wrong way, or for the wrong reasons. This is why Jesus said, “. . . strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” The Bible clearly teaches that that not everyone who has some kind of belief in God or some outward appearance of religion will be accepted in the end.
Nevertheless, I maintain and assert my belief that God exists in Spirit and in truth; that some people have found the genuine truth of God as manifested in the teachings and person of Jesus Christ; and that many theists, but all atheists are wrong and are driven not by facts, logic, reason and evidence, but by something else.
When it comes to the standard arguments for or against either position, theism or atheism, I have never attached a lot of importance to those. The fine-tuning of the universe, and the many examples of extraordinary precision and order in the animal world make the idea of creation by blind chance completely unrealistic to me – but I don’t expect any atheist or agnostic to be bowled over by that sort of argument.
The First Cause argument also seems to me to be of limited utility. That there must be a definite starting point rather than in infinite regress of causes; or that the physical universe has not existed forever, and hence must have some sort of cause – those are I think valid points, but they are too vague and their results are inconclusive at best. What I mean by that is, even if it could be scientifically and mathematically proven that there was in fact a God who created everything, this would still be inadequate from the Christian point of view.
Scripturally, just to believe in some kind of a God is not enough. We need the God who has revealed himself in Christ. As Jesus Christ himself said in the Gospel of John, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Of course, if a conversion from atheism to some sort of an indistinct philosophical God were to prove to be a step leading in the end to the recognition of Christ, that would be splendid – however, many people have believed in some sort of a God yet never come to accept the deity of Christ and the veracity of the New Testament.
What is needed is something entirely different. For example, Paul teaches in I Corinthians that “. . . the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” He also says in this same letter that the preaching of Christ is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks.
God came to earth for a short time in Roman Palestine? Unbelievable.
Only through participation by faith in Christ’s sacrificial death and cleansing by his shed blood can we find forgiveness of sins? Illogical and unfair.
God brought the entire cosmos into being out of nothing by his spoken word alone? Impossible.
Such unpopular ideas are “not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought” (I Corinthians).
This does not mean there is no place for argument. Many Christian thinkers and writers have demonstrated that belief in a divinely created universe is not inherently illogical or irrational. They have shown that is it not contrary to science to believe in biblical teachings, even in miracles, since science cannot prove the non-existence of God and neither can it deny him the right to transcend, on very rare occasions, the scientific laws that he himself has made.
Arguments can be helpful sometimes, but ultimately the decision to believe or not to believe is a matter of the heart, mind and soul that goes far beyond merely intellectual considerations. The Bible says that we cannot know, see or believe in the truth of biblical revelation and in the reality of Jesus Christ without faith, and that faith is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8). Why God gives it to some and not to others we cannot know, since all are equally undeserving: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
This requires some comments on the inadequacy of independent human reason, and on the nature of faith. Secularists dismiss faith as being belief without evidence – that is a gross oversimplification, and by no means the last word on the subject.
Paul says in Hebrews that “ faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” This means that a living faith, a faith that can change lives and bear the spiritual and moral fruits as described in scripture - as opposed to mere intellectual assent to doctrines - is itself evidence of the reality of the spiritual world.
We read in 2 Corinthians that “. . . we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” It is faith by which we perceive the reality of abiding spiritual truths above and beyond the flux and change of the material world – and it is this faith by which we live, if our faith is genuine. “The just shall live by faith,” and “we walk by faith, not by sight” – but not all faith is genuine, and not all religious beliefs are equally valid.
The materialists deny the reality of this spiritual world because it cannot be verified according to scientific criteria, but our own everyday thoughts and feelings cannot be verified or validated by materialist criteria either. Can you prove scientifically that you love your mother? Our emotions cannot be seen, weighed, measured, or observed under any microscope – yet they are real nonetheless. This is because matter is not the only reality.
There is much to reality, and to human experiences within that reality, outside of the shallow mud puddle of allegedly scientific materialism. There is no scientific proof for the validity of materialism either. It is a personal choice, not an empirically verifiable fact. This does not mean that faith gives us license to believe and advocate every form of absurdity. The objects of the biblical Christian faith and standards for the Christian life are precisely delineated.
None of this has any effect whatever on the practice of modern science. The fields of chemistry, physics, biology, and mathematics remain intact. If once in the entire history of the world a man walked on water, or healed a man blind from birth, this does not invalidate principles of ship-building or medical eye care. Those who say science must proceed without God are completely mistaken, and are dismissing higher spiritual realities of which they are completely ignorant – and look at the chaos that has emerged out of the rejection of God. Well over two centuries of relying on reason alone without revelation has not produced a clear consensus. Look at the writings of Marx, Freud, Darwin, J.S. Mill, Hegel, Nietzsche, Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Kant, Voltaire, and who knows how many others. All of them combined or any one of them separately have not produced clear and coherent standards by which we can live (for some elaboration on this from a non-religious viewpoint see this article)
Karl Marx is a prime example of the inadequacy of human reason. In contrast to Baron von Munchausen, who was trapped in a bog but lifted himself out by pulling on his own hair, Marx completely failed to derive a creditable and meaningful guide to human conduct in spite of all of the hours he wasted reading in the British Library.
Marx’s first and biggest mistake was his atheism – which, by the way, he simply accepted as a given, and never (to my knowledge) made any real attempt to prove. This led him to an extremely limited view of the human personality, of social problems, and of solutions to those problems.
Marx’s description of religion as “the opium of the people” is not significantly lessened by quoting at more length the full context of that remark. Taking the passage in which the famous quote occurs, we are still left with religion as false and providing an illusory happiness for people who cannot confront life’s problems. In short, when Marx said that religion is the opium of the people, what he really meant, taking everything in context, was that religion is the opium of the people.
Marx then calls for the abolition of religion so that people might find their real happiness. Here we see Marx sitting in the library planning for the reorganization of society according to his ideas of how people are supposed to be happy – but what about all of the people who do not want some eccentric German intellectual planning their society and their happiness for them? What about those who do not want to accept the abolition of their religion? Lenin, Stalin and Mao gave us very clear ideas of how such enemies of the people should be dealt with. Were they distorting Marxism? People disagree on this. I don’t believe it was a distortion. I believe that dictatorship, totalitarianism and fascism were inherent in Marx’s personality and in his program. That was one of Bakunin’s concerns, and he was not speaking from hindsight.
More to the point, I believe that Marx was mistaken about the nature and origins of religion. I believe that religion has its origins in the divine creation of Adam and Eve, and in the resultant deepest needs of the human heart. This innate and profoundly human impulse to religious belief can be and has been corrupted, distorted, and diverted into wrong paths, but the fact that there was never an officially atheist society in all of recorded human history until the 20th century is clear and undeniable proof of the depth and power of the human need for some sort of higher meaning and purpose. That in this we are distinct from every other living creature on earth is due to the divine origins of the human soul. “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis).
What if it is not religion, but rather Marxism that is the illusion? What if the belief that we can create a humanistic paradise by eliminating private property and money is a fantasy? It has been said that “Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals,” and that is much more substantive than a simple sort of “Same to you” retort, in my opinion.
Marx was wrong about many things – why couldn’t he be wrong about religion? He was badly mistaken about the future development of capitalism, and all of his predictions of its collapse were wrong – and that was in his alleged field of expertise. This is not just a criticism made possible by the advantage of hindsight either. Many people in Marx’s day thought that the solution to the undeniable abuses of unrestrained capitalism was not revolution and dictatorship, but gradual reform by democratic means. What actually happened had nothing to do with Marx’s fantasy world.
Marx was also wrong about where the revolution would come. He predicted that it would come first to the most advanced and industrialized countries. However, the first Marxist revolution broke out in a backward country where democratic reform was not a viable option. Whether Lenin corrupted Marxism or merely adapted it can be debated, but he did share the Marxist dream of eliminating social inequalities by eliminating private property and money by violent means.
Part of Marx’s problem was not only ignorance of human nature. He was also so obsessed with the evils of capitalism that he could not objectively recognize its inherent advantages, including flexibility. He was also wrong in thinking that the relationship between the capitalists and the workers could only be one of oppression and violence. Both groups had shared interests, which could be and were advanced by mutual compromise in democratic, legal processes.
Concerning Marx’s profound ignorance of real people in real life, his followers were completely surprised in 1914 when the vast majority of European workers chose nationalism and patriotism over imaginary international working class loyalties (Lenin was faithful to Marxist theory here though). Their exceedingly blinkered view – one might say blind view – of human beings as products only of economic factors left them completely out of touch with what was happening in a time of great crisis.
Marx wanted to change the world and he couldn’t even provide for his own family. If he had only gotten a job as a teacher, journalist, or whatever he not only would have avoided wasting so much time on his useless studies. He also wouldn’t have put his wife and children through the miseries of poverty and poor health due to his neglect that even sympathetic biographers have recorded as a matter of basic fact.
To my mind, Marx was a failure as a thinker, as a husband, as a father and as a human being. He wanted to tell everyone else what life was all about and he didn’t even know himself.
Furthermore, the Marxist socialist paradise is never going to come. We will never have a society in which socialistic economic and political manipulations will succeed in bringing about the elimination of poverty and social inequities. We might just as well aim for an imaginary ideal society in which no one will ever suffer from old age and illness. That can be achieved by God alone in the kingdom of heaven.
One reason for the impossibility of a socialist paradise on earth is the reality of sin in the human heart. This guarantees that incompetence, greed, love of power, callous insensitivity and even cruelty will quickly infiltrate the ranks of the socialist masters, who will place their own well-being and flourishing before that of everyone else. I think it was Hayek who said that socialist systems would also attract people with authoritarian and even criminal personalities who loved having power over others and telling them what to do and what to believe.
The alleged selfishness of capitalism is nothing compared to the selfishness of bureaucrats. Drunk with power and privilege, they can’t be blasted out with dynamite, let alone fired. They are not held accountable for their mistakes, frauds and oppressions, and will cheerfully consign millions of people to slavery, misery and even death while they have all the material comforts. At least under capitalism people have a measure of personal freedom. When the government makes all of the decisions, which is inevitably the case under socialism, that freedom is gone.
Christ told the story of a rich man who died and went to hell, while the poor beggar who lived in misery died and went to heaven. This was not meant to illustrate that all rich people were bad and all poor people were good. Neither was it meant to illustrate that all poor people would go to heaven while all rich people would be condemned to eternal punishment. It was meant to illustrate that there is a life to come after this one. Physical death is not the end. It is the entry into the spiritual reality of God and of righteous judgment.
Here ends the article. Following is some information about an e-book sale including some of my own modest attempts
Three of my Christian Ebooks are for sale at the price of $0.00 for the entire month of July. I encourage you to take a look at one or two of these books. They are different from much of what is being written these days – for better or for worse – and the price is affordable.
Light in the Darkness of Postmodernism: An American Christian Surveys His Life and Times
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1337941
This is only partly autobiography, but also contains comments on various church and social issues. The political failure of the religious right; the increasing domination of left-wing political views; the rise of feminism and the closely related gay rights movement; the golden age of American materialism in the 50s; reasons for the current weaknesses of the nominally Bible-believing churches and other topics are discussed.
Questions And Observations On The Conflict Between Faith-Based and Secular Rationalities
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1352102
This includes some observations on the cultural and social benefits of the Protestant Reformation; the influence of secular and modern ideas on the Holocaust; and some loosely organized thoughts on the validity of religious belief in the modern or postmodern era.
Where is the American Church? Three Essays on Salvation, Sin and Judgment
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1368242
Doctrinal problems including very watered-down versions of the Christian message, and conformity to the world in significant areas, are considered in the first essay.
Secularist objections are considered in the second essay. Some of them are:
many secularist arguments such as the age of the earth and the inaccuracy of Genesis
the massacres of the Canaanites
the sacrifice of Isaac and others.
The question of the relevance of the wrath of God, not just in the end times but in our own day, and on our own nation, is considered in the third essay.
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